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Edius Vs Premiere

Online Catalogue | EDITING PROGRAMS
information on EDIUS, Premiere Pro, Avid and Vegas software | Grass Valley Edius | Edius Vs Premiere

Grass Valley EDIUS and Adobe Premiere are the two most popular programs we supply. Both have good points and bad points so how do you decide which to choose?

This document is a brief run down of the major advantages of both. Please note this was written comparing Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 with Grass Valley EDIUS 5.5.


EDIUS Pro	Adobe Premiere Pro
Stability
EDIUS' biggest strength is its stability. We have customers who have said they have never had a crash. It is also quick. Its probably fair to say that you can get a job done quicker with EDIUS once you know how to use it than with other programs. It has the best realtime performance of all the editing programs and also supports new formats of video before other programs.	EDIUS definitely scores for stability over Premiere but this is not to say Premiere will crash a lot. I would not be surprised to have a crash during a day of intensive editing for example, but if it is crashing every 10 minutes then there is something wrong with the computer. The latest version, the 64 bit CS5 is a definite improvement especially if you have lots of RAM in your system. As it has just been released as we write this we have no results from the "real world" but in our own tests it has certainly been very good and much better than previous versions, so it could be as good as EDIUS.

Realtime performance

Comparing the realtime performance of the two programs has got tricky with Premiere Pro CS5. EDIUS does exactly the same under all circumstances - the only way it will do more realtime effects is to get a more powerful PC.

Premiere's performance will vary depending on the graphic card and other hardware in your computer. With the right kind of nVidia card Premiere can do the same kind of realtime performance as EDIUS using it's Mercury Playback Engine. Matrox are promising that if you add in a Matrox MX02 Max then it will be ever better - although as we write this we have not seen this in operation as Matrox have not produced drivers for CS5.

EDIUS' realtime playback will also work while editing using a DV deck - so if your workflow still includes playback to a DV device EDIUS will definitely win. Premiere's realtime playback does not work when using a DV device for playback.

Performance with different types of video format also varies. Both are now very good at handling native AVCHD and other H264 formats for example, and on a modern machine with the right graphic card (for Adobe) you will find they are both pretty similar - maybe EDIUS can manage 4 layers of Pnp while Premiere only manages 3½ but it is pretty close. Without the graphic card it is a different story though - EDIUS still does the same playback but Premiere will struggle to play back most effects and to see them in full quality you will have to render. This will make a difference if using a laptop for example as there are no graphic cards in laptops that will work with Premiere's realtime playback engine. This means EDIUS gives the best realtime playback on any laptop.

Built-in Features

EDIUS probably does 95% of what you want with your editing - colour correction, picture in picture, chromakey etc. It has an image stabilising plug-in from ProDad included, plus a lot of glow and arty effects in the form of Vitascene andNew Blu Effects.

You can output to Blu-ray and DVD from the timeline. Disc writing is not as comprehensive with EDIUS as it is with Premiere Pro and Encore, but quicker and easier.

EDIUS can also stamp the date and time of the original shot onto the footage when recorded to tape or encoded to a file. This has proved to be a killer reason to buy EDIUS for some people.

Premiere Pro excels in its breadth of features. With Premiere there is the capacity to do the "extra 5%" because there are more variations of filters and plug-ins and with the dynamic link to After Effects you can achieve more in some ways that with EDIUS.

You can do more comprehensive DVD/Blu-ray writing than possible with EDIUS using Adobe Encore which always comes with Premiere Pro (even if you buy it on its own)

Premiere also has lots of other features not found in EDIUS:

Extensive metadata support - if there is any extra information in the file Premiere will see it and you can add your own - very useful for things like rights management.
Speech transcription - get premiere to transcribe all your clips and then search the results for particular words. At present this is about 40% accurate but bound to improve.
Dynamic link with other Adobe programs (see below).

Format Support

Both programs support a whole variety of formats very well. With both the main goal is that you take the footage, drop it on the timeline and use it, rather than transcode or change the format into something different. This means the both score over other programs like Apple Final Cut Pro where you really need to change video in Quicktime before using it, or have to transcode video such as AVCHD before you can edit it.

Playback of the formats is also pretty similar even with highly compressed formats like AVCHD. Both can now play the video as it comes off the camera very well, although EDIUS has a slight edge is and is generally a bit "nippier". This assumes you are using a fairly up-to-date computer such as a Core2Quad or ideally an i7. On 3-4 year old computers both will struggle, but EDIUS comes with a quick built-in way of encoding to a different format, call Canopus HQ, for machines that cannot cope with the footage.

Older versions of Premiere Pro tended to lag behind other programs when it came to supporting new formats. This is not the case now as CS5 supports more formats than most. EDIUS supports a similar range of formats although Premiere supports a couple that EDIUS does not support, such as RED Camera footage.

Premiere also supports rendering in 10 bit colour where as EDIUS only supports 8 bit colour, so it better for high end formats such as RED or AVC-Intra. For most people using formats like AVDHD, DV, HDV, XDCAM and DVCPro HD and outputting to DVD or Blu-ray 10 bit colour support is immaterial as all these formats are only 8 bit.

Adobe provide a window called Media Browser which helps you to import the various card based formats easily.

Capture and Clips

DV and HDV capture work flawlessly. With HDV you have the option of converting into Canopus HQ format as you capture, for use on older slower computers or capturing as native HDV files. EDIUS does scene detection for all sources and can even give clips reel names (a seemingly small point but one which has only just been added in version 5.1). We have had very few problems with EDIUS capture.

EDIUS can also take footage off DVDs (non-copy protected DVDs) and music from CDs, Premiere does not. The DVD ripping side does not work with all DVDs, but worked with most we have tried. We have even had customers buy EDIUS as an add-on for their Premiere system just to be able to rip footage off DVD for re-editing!

Premiere Pro capture is also pretty robust and handles DV and HDV happily. With CS5 we can now capture HDV with scene splitting (amazing it took 3 versions to add this to HDV capture).

Both programs handle clips, project management and recapture in a pretty similar way. Premiere now has the slight edge in that you choose to consolidate and recapture just one timeline rather than the whole project but this is a pretty minor point. Importing and recapturing EDLs in EDIUS is slightly easier than Premiere Pro, but on the whole they are comparable. Premiere can import and export Final Cut pro-style projects, where as EDIUS can only import them (well who would want to go back to Final Cut Pro after trying EDIUS ;-))

Clips are viewed in the source window as you would expect and Premiere does have an edge as it allows you to view the sound as a waveform before it is added to the timeline, or to turn off the picture and see the sound part of the clip before it is added to the timeline - both very useful. You can even zoom into the sound display in the player window to identify quiet events, where as you cannot do this in EDIUS.

Sound editing

EDIUS edits sound down to the frame level - so 1/25th second. This is good enough for most purposes. You can rubber band sound levels and mix as many tracks as you like easily.

EDIUS also comes with quite a few useful sound effects including a reasonably decent effect for removing noise from a clip, pitch shift and EQ.

A new addition is audio normalising - whereby you select a few clips and tell EDIUS to automatically raise/lower the audio level of each clip so they peak at the same level. Useful for quickly increasing the sound levels as much as possible without causing distortion. Of course Premiere has had this effect for years...

There is no surround sound mixing as you have in Premiere although you can output a 5.1 surround sound file from EDIUS in Dobly format - something you can't do in Premiere without buying and extra plug-in; it's just a shame you cannot decide what sound goes where (ie front, back, left, righ centre) becuase you can't mix it!

Premiere Pro can edit audio down to the sample level, so can be more accurate when trying to line up a newley recorded sound track, for example.

Premiere can also mix full 5.1 surround sound - although you need an extra plug-in to get this sound mix on to a DVD.

Premiere can adjust sound on the clip level or track level, sound effects can be applied to an entire track or just one clip and several audio tracks can be routed to another track, or bus, so that effects can be applied to all at once.

The sound editing of Premiere Pro is undoubtedly superior to EDIUS; EDIUS sound editing can best be compared to Premiere 6.5 abilities, although for many people this is enough - and if you want more you could always buy Adobe SoundBooth orSony Sound Forge and do high quality sound edits there - even if you are editing with EDIUS.

Effects

EDIUS does not have as many filters and lacks keyframing on some of the effects but what it does it does very well and can play more filters in realtime than Premiere. This does have a real benefit when editing as you can try more options and see how they work (which you can only judge properly when they are moving at full speed) without having to wait to render.

EDIUS' keyframable slow motion works in realtime, where as the Premiere version has to rendered to be seen properly.

It also has some effects which Premiere does not:

Decent 3D effects - the basic 3D pnp effect is much nicer to use than Premeire Pro's "Basic 3D" effect and EDIUS has a range of GPU 3D transitions, cubes, spheres, warps and explosion effects. Many of our customers use these kinds of effects as their customers insist on them. Premiere has a large range of pretty basic transitions that has not changed since the days or Premiere (not Pro). There were some fancy GPU effects in CS4 but they did not make it into CS5 and also the ones that used to come with the Matrox cards are no more. You can add in a plug-in like Boris if you need fancy effects, but they do not come with Premiere Pro.

EDIUS also ships with some effects made by other companies - some bundles of EDIUS do not contain all the effects but most do:

ProDAD Mercalli - a decent image stabiliser to straighten out wobbly shots

ProDAD Vitascene - movie look effects as well as various glow and sparkle effects.

NewBlu Effects - various paint-style and old movie effects/

There is no doubt that Premiere beats EDIUS for the sheer breadth and versatility of effects supplied. Premiere has a huge range of colour correction filters, transitions, track mattes, garbage mattes, lightning, lens flare and various distorts, but poor 3D. With CS5 and the addition or the "Ultra Chromakey" effect Premiere Pro can now boast a realtime chromakey effect that is as good as the EDIUS' version.

All the effects are controlled through the Effects Control Window and they all follow the same logic. So learn how to keyframe one and you can keyframe them all. EDIUS has many different styles of effects palettes for different effects - how you keyframe the 2d pnp is completely different to how you keyframe the 3D pnp for example.

Premiere has more plug-ins available although both Boris and ProDad plug-ins work in both programs.

Buy the Production Studio and your effects potential is practically limitless as you get access to After Effects, and with the dynamic link can easily swap footage and compositions between After Effects and Premiere Pro.

Titles

EDIUS’ Quick Titler can do realtime, smooth rolls and crawls or long lists of text (which Premiere cannot do in realtime).

EDIUS’ other titler, Inscriber Title Motion, can do 2D, and even 3D fully animated titles - which is can render very quickly. Title Motion is not the most friendly titler in the world, so will take a bit of effort to learn, however, its animation capabilities are huge

Premiere Pro has an excellent Titler but you can only animate the titles using standard Premiere motion paths - so it would basically be a block of moving across the screen.

For more complex animated titles you would use After Effects - which does come with many pre-made templates, and offers you huge amounts of options.

DVD & Blu-ray writing

EDIUS will write a DVD or Blu-ray disc with basic still menus straight off the timeline. The disc writing is simple and quick. However, to make a more complex DVD you must use another program - and many people chose to use Adobe Encore.

Another alternative is Sony DVD Architect a program of similar abilities to Adobe Encore and which you can buy, when you buy a computer system, for £209+VAT.

EDIUS' writing is also fast -for Blu-ray you can add the Grass Valley FireCoder Blu which will make you a Blu-ray disc faster than realtime.

Since Encore comes with Premiere Pro you have extensive DVD and Blu-ray writing available straight away. The two programs also talk to each other - if you add chapter markers to your Premiere timeline they become chapter markers in Encore, for example, and you can send a whole timeline straight to Encore from Premiere and let Encore encode it.

There is nothing to stop you using Encore with EDIUS, but it will cost more money. Encore is only available with Premiere and they cost about £600. If you already own an old copy of Premiere you can get it via an upgrade which costs £229 +VAT.

Encoding to Blu-ray is not that fast although you can add aMatrox Compress HD (a kind of Matrox FireCoder Blu) to speed up the process.


Multi-camera
Both programs now have a multicamera mode. Which is better is actually debatable - EDIUS version can handle up to 8 cameras and outputs to your TV/monitor without extra hardware - Premiere's can only handle 4 cameras and only outputs to TV if you use a Matrox card in the system (most people will do this).


Integration
EDIUS does not integrate with any other programs. This does not mean that you cannot use EDIUS with After Effects, Encore or Soundbooth - in fact we would recommend these as extra programs even if editing in EDIUS. The Grass Valley hardware (SPARK, HDSTORM etc) even come with video out plug-ins for some of the Adobe programs, it just takes a bit more effort to get footage from one program to another. .	One of Premiere Pro’s greatest strengths, and a killer feature for some, is how it works with other Adobe programs. You can make chapter points for Encore while editing in Premiere, put After Effects compositions directly on the Premiere timeline, right click to send clips to Soundbooth for audio sweetening, bring in Photoshop files and maintain all the layers as a new timeline or single file.


Customisation
Very good for both - you can save screen layouts & keyboard mapping. EDIUS scores slightly since you can customise the buttons as well as keyboard short cuts and save different user profiles so that each user can instantly setup the interface the way they prefer and carry their settings from computer to computer.

Output options

EDIUS 5 can output to many different formats and these can be done via the batch encoding - make a list of the timelines you want to export and then EDIUS will do them one at a time.

It can export to nearly every format you want and can do up-scaling and down-scaling as well as frame rate conversions as part of the process. Add ProCoder, which will work directly from the EDIUS timeline, and you get better quality and more options.

Premiere can do everything EDIUS can do and some more as well. In particular it can do both variations of FLASH - old FLVs and the new F4V high def files. Hardly surprising since Adobe own FLASH. You can also add markers on the timeline that become que points in the Flash file.

EDIUS cannot do FLASH and even if ProCoder is added it can only do older formats of Flash.

All is handled via the ADOBE MEDIA ENCODER - a stand alone program into which you can add either individual files or Premiere timelines, so you can batch encode just like you can with EDIUS. In fact AME goes further then EDIUS, in that it will run in the background while you carry on editing. There are also some high quality rendering options you can choose which will improve quality of, for example, down scaling an HD timeline to SD (at the cost of a lot of extra rendering time).

Where EDIUS does score is speed - AME is quite a bit slower.

Extra Hardware

If you want to edit HD then you really need to add a card into the system that allows you to see the picture while you edit at full quality, Grass Valley do 4:

HDSPARK - HDMI out only, and inexpensive.

HDSTORM - HDMI i/o and composite, SVIDEO and composite i/o if you buy the HDSTORM Plus

HDTHUNDER - HD-SDI i/o plus HDMI out.

They also have plug-ins to output from Adobe After Effects and Photoshop as well as other programs like Newtek LightWave.

Adobe do not make any extra hardware but they do have a lot available from other people:

Matrox

We would recommend Matrox as the hardware which not only adds extra i/o to Premiere Pro but also improves the program. Their current range of Matrox MXO2 products will be supporting Premiere Pro 5 in June 2010 and will handle all the ins and outs you need. The MAX versions of these will also add extra realtime effects.

Black Magic

Black Magic cards do not improve Premiere performance; what they do is to add extra i/o to Premiere cheaply. the Intensity Pro adds HDMI and component i/o for around £150, or you can add HD-SDI for less than £300!

Black Magic also work with other programs - Sony Vegas on the PC and Apple Final Cut Pro on a Mac.Black Magic cards already support Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 - one of the first to do so!

Which should you choose?

Both systems are very good it would be very easy to either "big up" or run down either of them. If we wanted to sell you some other program we could easily say "EDIUS is so new its missing half the stuff you take for granted" or "Premiere - that just crashes every 5 minutes". Neither statement is true. Yes EDIUS does lack stuff other programs have got, but it also has features other programs do not posses, like the ability to rip from DVDs. Premiere is not as stable as EDIUS, which is true, but does not crash every 5 minutes. It will crash a lot if not set up properly or if something is wrong but then all programs will do that.

If you like Premiere you should probably stick with it - Premiere Pro is a very powerful system and can handle nearly everything you want to throw at it.

On the other hand EDIUS does all the basics very well, is a very stable platform and we have a lot of customers happily using it. If you want more advanced effects, audio or DVD writing you can still add the Adobe Production Studio and just use EDIUS and not Premiere for your editing!

If you are undecided then give us a ring to discuss your options or come down to us in Hove for a demo.

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